Thanks for responding. I'm having great difficulty following your thoughts, however. Could you perhaps just begin by saying what you think Williams' position is, regarding an Absolute Conception -- what is the "naive argument"?

I may comment a bit more on the issue of personhood as an instituted status, and what some Supreme Court might or might not be able to rule, since you raised this pertinent question, later on. — Pierre-Normand

I hope you do -- always interested in your thoughts. And about the ontology of chatbots as well.

I wonder if you are understanding the "artworld" as the high or elite art world. I think the idea is that there are multiple artworlds, only partially overlapping. For instance, high art, graffiti art, country music, black metal music, harry potter fan fiction, philosophical essays. Each gatekeep with notions of what belongs and what does not, and what is elevated and what is not.
. — hypericin

Yes, this is right. I was implicitly importing my idea of which "artworld" would be appropriate in a discussion about a possibly-museum-worthy painting. But the thing is not monolithic, as you say, especially when we're talking popular art.

"they", the art elite, who do the baptizing. — hypericin

Troublesome, for sure. Some of my favorite contemporary visual art is so-called "outsider art" or "visionary art." The standards there are very much counter to NY-gallery-type art elites. But it illustrates your point about multiple worlds: There is nonetheless a "we," an artworld, that develops a consensus around outsider art too.

Of course, with any of these, we are always free to disagree with what is canonized as good art. — hypericin

I think this is the saving grace of the whole conception. We can separate out the use of "art" as some kind of honorific or compliment, and just say, "Yeah, this particular artworld has helped us see certain kinds of things as art; now the conversation can begin about how aesthetically valuable it is."

But they are still evaluating it as art, and finding it lacking in some way. That is an artistic judgement. They would never think to do this of a stop sign, for instance. — hypericin

I could go either way on this. And of course the criticism comes in different flavors and strengths. I'm not sure whether we should call such criticism an aesthetic judgment, or a judgment about what is art. Maybe it's got two prongs: "This crap isn't art in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it art, then it's terrible art." No one is offering the stop sign as an art object (usually!), but the critic is upset about the whole concept of "offering" something as art. It's this crazy pretense (from their point of view) that they object to.

someone printing out "Times New Roman" in Times New Roman on 8.5"x11" paper, putting it up in art museum — Moliere

As soon as you put it in a museum, — hypericin

If either of these things happened just as described, it would be vandalism, not art, and the person would presumably be arrested. :smile: Seriously, one individual cannot "put something in a museum." It takes some kind of collective agreement, some "we," in order to do the baptizing.

But with that said, the issue is far from solved, or even well understood. Danto's "artworld" is one way of trying to get a grip on it. The difference you mention between art as category and art as evaluative becomes important here. It's a bit more comfortable to agree that "what the artworld calls art is art" if we're not also being asked to agree that it's good art. The artworld can be wrong about that, on this theory.

So, is a local coffee shop with an interest in painting, part of the artworld? I don't have a strong opinion either way. Is there a clear line between "bad art" and "so meretricious it isn't even art but rather commercialism"? I doubt it.

Even if the reaction is "This is bad because it doesn't look like anything, and my 3 year old could paint it", that is a reaction to art, not to a utilitarian object. — hypericin

Usually, yes, but the reactor often wants to say something more by that remark. They want to say, "This isn't art at all. You're either the victim of a con job, or you're trying to con me." They're reacting from the traditional understanding of art as defined by some combination of terms like "hard to make," "reflects an ability to draw well," "beautiful/sublime/original," "requiring X, Y, Z materials and media," "the result of a single individual's unusual degree of talent," and more.

I sympathize. I like those kinds of art a lot. I think the quality percentage is often higher in the traditional forms. But if we're philosophers trying to understand what art is and what it means, we can't stick with those traditional criteria -- not unless we're also able to make a plausible case that pretty much every innovation in the Western artworld since c. 1919 has been fabulously wrong about what art can be.

The letter you quote from makes an excellent case for why computer programs are not agents in anything like the sense a human is. Do you agree that we should try to avoid using language that appears to reify such programs as 1st-person entities? (or however you might phrase the latter idea)

So other observations would not be “rival” views, in competition — Antony Nickles

Do you mean, they would not be from our point of view, or from the point of view of an Absolute Conception that claims to be able to give an explanation of them?

This is perhaps another way of asking, If we agree to set aside the idea of a legitimate Absolute Conception, how are we going to characterize what an alleged Absolute Conception is saying? Isn't the AC itself now revealed as an error? Is there a way to describe it, more mildly, as merely another "incomplete" view?

Really interesting and helpful, thanks.

Couple of thoughts:

the most salient difference between human beings and chatbots. . .
stems from the fact that—in part because they are not embodied animals, and in part because they do not have instituted statuses like being citizens, business partners, or family members—chatbots aren't persons. — Pierre-Normand

I agree with you, as it happens, about personhood here, but we have to recognize that many proponents of a more liberal interpretation of "person" are going to regard this as mere stipulation. What, they will ask, does being an embodied animal have to do with personhood? etc. We can't very well just reply, "That's how we've always 'played that game.'" The US Supreme Court changed the game, concerning corporations and persons; why couldn't philosophers?

My second thought is: Like just about everyone else who talks about AI, you're accepting the fiction that there is something called a chatbot, that it can be talked about with the same kind of entity-language we used for, e.g., humans. I maintain there is no such thing. What there is, is a computer program, a routine, a series of instructions, that as part of its routine can simulate a 1st-person point of view, giving credence to the idea that it "is ChatGPT." I think we should resist this way of thinking and talking. In Gertrude Stein's immortal words, "There's no there there."

...A better interpretation...
— J
Better for what? Again, no absolute scale is available. — Banno

But as we've been discussing, we don't need an absolute scale in order to compare good and better. I'm saying that a literal interpretation of, e.g., the book of Genesis is not as good an interpretation as one that focuses on its metaphorical, mythical, or psychological meanings. If someone wanted to ask into what's "better" about this, I'd start with pointing out how difficult it is to believe things that couldn't be true.

The idea is that there is a correct interpretation. — Banno

And that what we started with is the key to such an interpretation. I know you're doubtful whether there could be a useful interpretation of holy books, but such an interpretation, if there is one, isn't likely to be the one the author(s) had in mind when they wrote about, e.g., Adam, Eve, floods, tablets of stone, etc. Those events, I suppose were "originally" meant to be accounts of true things. A better interpretation will not accept that.

the idea that we can discern some imagined shared intent amongst the authors of your constitution — Banno

Oh, that. Originalism. What the Framers intended. A bit like a literal reading of the Bible.

I'd like to think that we haven't moved from aesthetics to art history — Moliere

This is a great question, IMO. I'll go out on a limb and say that nothing very interesting can be said about aesthetics without locating what you're saying in some kind of art-making tradition. This means either assuming, or outright providing, some art history. I agree it's not a "move from," but a way of giving aesthetic discussion something to talk about. The two discourses require each other, in order to make sense.

there's something to 1 in differentiating, say, between drawing and painting. — Moliere

Yes, because here we have a question about the actual composition of the object, which Danto showed was not the question concerning art tout court. I should have noted that in my post, thanks.

The problem occurs in the US Supreme Court as well, apparently. — Banno

Which particular piece of poltroonery do you have in mind? Corporations as persons?

It can be used to infer an intent, but does not derive meaning from intent. — Banno

Yes, that needs to remain clear. You read a poem; you derive a meaning; it may or may not be what the poet intended, though it's often reasonable to infer that. You've heard of "the intentional fallacy" in lit-crit, right? Same issue.

Right, but it's still an assertion even if the speaker is mistaken.

Yes, I know! :wink: — MoK

Ah, but then you don't actually "see the cat on the mat" . . . my avatar is a digital entity, to put it generously.

Which doesn't mean you haven't asserted doing so, of course! Assertion doesn't depend on the truth of what is asserted, as we were all taught.

LLM's require going through a lot of complex inner states in order to engage in language use. — wonderer1

My 2 cents -- and @Hanover may see it differently -- is that by putting it this way, we're succumbing to the illusion that "an LLM" could have any states at all. The computer on which it runs could, I suppose, but I don't think that's what you mean.

Having said that, I should also say that I'm not very familiar with how computer programmers talk about their work. Is "inner state" a common term? If so, do you know what they're meaning to designate? Could there be a distinction between inner and outer, speaking strictly about the program?

I see the cat on the mat! — MoK

No, that's just my avatar. :wink:

What this means to me is that the ability to engage in langauge games does not require an inner state. What this does not mean is that we can ignore what the conscious state is or that langauge does not provide us a means for that conversation. — Hanover

Good. Just out of curiosity, has it been shown that an AI program can pass the Turing Test? The examples of bot-talk that I've seen cited in TPF wouldn't fool me for a minute, but maybe there are better ones. And it does depend, as you say, on whether we should see the Turing Test as a standard for whether we can be fooled (I'm saying we can't, yet) or as a standard for revealing "no inconsistent behavioral manifestations." Thus, the program might perform perfectly in that regard, but when paired anonymously with a human who answers the same questions, it might nonetheless fail the "fool me" test. Leading to the intriguing question: why? Does a human exhibit more than consistent question-answering behavior, even in a test designed for question-and-answer?

A photograph is a copy of what exists in the world, and therefore depicts what is necessarily true. — RussellA

At one point, that was accurate. But the technology rapidly advanced so that what is now presented in a photograph is as open to question as what a painter paints.

There is no programmer out there, for example, that went through and intentionally answered whatever question you might pose to ChatGPT. — Hanover

I see your point. It's a tough nut. Do we need to try to find some limit cases where we could speak of a programmer "intentionally" doing something via a program? And do we agree that the idea of a program doing anything intentionally is a non-starter? (just leaving Davidson out of all this for the time being)

Notice, BTW, that I'm trying to push back against what I'm calling the "impersonation" by speaking only of "the program" and not personifying it with a name such as ChatGPT, or implying that one could pose a question to such an entity. This is part of the very clever way that the programmers encourage the illusion that the program could have intentions or express meanings, etc. And I'm not saying this is nefarious in some way -- creating this illusion is vital if we're going to get along in cyberworld, where icons stand in for 0s and 1s, etc. But it needs to be resisted in philosophical examination of the kind of questions posed here.

That was a spellcheck error where it somehow put "not" instead of "more." You charitably read me as rational and deciphered my intent correctly. Very Davidsonian of you. — Hanover

Brilliant.

This does not mean that we look into the heads of the speakers to decipher intent, but we have to ascribe it to the person based upon our assumption that they are rational and logical. "Ascribe" is the operative word, where we assume it and place it upon the speaker, but we don't pretend to know specifically what the intent is, but we do know there is an intent, but it's a black box. — Hanover

Yes, this is all fine, though "black box" might be overemphasizing the inscrutability.

That's why the Chatbot example seems relevant. We do not have to "ascribe intention to the [person] program based upon our assumption that they are rational and logical." Such a (false) assumption is the "impersonation" I'm instead ascribing to the programmer. This seems right in line with Davidson, because even by ascribing no intention to the program, we're able to explain the meaningfulness of its outputs by deferring that ascription back to the programmer -- again, without needing to be able to say specifically what these intentions are.

Is this analogy too simple?: It's like holding up a puppet and pretending it's "talking" and "having intentions." Every child knows this only a game, an impersonation.

we don't much need the bit about inferring some intent on the part of the speaker. We can do so, but it's not needed. Meaning here is not the intent of the speaker. Speaker meaning is something else.

That'll cause some folk no end of confusion. It shouldn't. It does not imply that the speaker does not have an intent. — Banno

Nor does it imply that there aren't cases where speaker intent is very important. I think the Chatbot example is such a case. The program itself can't be said to have intentions, thought the sentences it produces have meaning. But the intention of its programmers, as best we know, is to impersonate intention on the part of the program. This of course takes "intention" to a different level, but that's my point.

Ready Made and Found Art were a provocative objection by its creators to what "ART" was supposed to look like and mean. "If I say it is art, then it is art." They said. — BC

More defensible is, "If we say it is art, then it is art," which can also open up interesting conversations about who is included in "we."

"What art is supposed to look like" and "what art is supposed to mean" are separate inquiries, I think, both prompted by an object like Duchamp's urinal. D's choice of the urinal as his "ready-made" was of course not arbitrary; he offers an object that is "supposed to" look like something unbeautiful, utilitarian, with connotations of disgust -- the sort of thing our culture encourages us not to look at. So, can we declare it to be art nonetheless?

The "what does it mean" question is the more lasting, and exciting. Here, any object would do, and the question applies as much to found art as to ready-mades. What does it mean, what are we saying, when we declare something to be art? Are we discovering something within that object? Or are we declaring a way of seeing, a way of regarding? I think art should be understood as something we put a metaphorical frame around, and 20th century art has shown us that that can be literally anything. The title of Danto's famous book suggests this eloquently: The Transfiguration of the Commonplace.

Conceptual art pushes this even further, asking whether an "object" is even needed to reside within the frame.

The story we tell about the painting is different to the story we tell about the wall — Banno

something being art is dependent on how we chose to talk about it. — Banno

the "circumstances" that reveal art are exactly that -- circumstances, understandings, things we ourselves have to put in place, — J

We're all saying the same thing here. So the interesting question is, What are those stories? What are those circumstances? How do they vary from era to era, culture to culture?

What makes a painting a painting? Is it that it's done with paint? — Moliere

I'm going to say Yes, but the next question is, "What makes a painting art?" As you say, why isn't a "painting" that covers my walls with white paint, art? Or could it be, ever?

circumstances that are not exactly artistic — Moliere

So what are these circumstances that are artistic? Should we bring in Danto at this point? He asks a similar question: Is it some feature or quality of the art object that tells us it is art?

What is it that makes a painting appear as a painting? — Moliere

That is, as something that fall under the rubric "art" as opposed to "wallpainting". A couple of possibilities:

1) Yes, it's something about the painted thing itself that reveals it to be art.

2) No, the "circumstances" that reveal art are exactly that -- circumstances, understandings, things we ourselves have to put in place, as opposed to discover within the object itself.

The object itself has, traditionally, been seen as offering us the necessary information, making (1) seem plausible, but after the developments of the 20th century, that's no longer an option. Or so Danto, and I, would say.

Again, your responses are thoughtful, on point, and help develop the questions of the OP. Much appreciated.

There is no fact that ensures those discussions even will be resolved, but that doesn’t annihilate the ability or process to do so, nor make it a matter of individual “opinion” (or a sociological matter). — Antony Nickles

Right. And we have to hold out against those who see this as a binary -- either we get a resolution or it's just a matter of opinion and/or "how people do."

I would think agreement on the criteria for what constitutes good (even “correct”) scientific method would be easier. — Antony Nickles

Easier than similar criteria for philosophy, anyway. Though I'm alive to the fact that there's a lot of soul-searching going on in the scientific community these days, or maybe it's just the philosophy-of-science community.

my concern has only been that dictating that a conception be “absolute” forces what constitutes “local” in comparison. And again, I think we are smooshing together “absolute” as a criteria and “absolute” as all-encompassing (“unified”). — Antony Nickles

Agreed. The criteriological usage is perhaps closer to Descartes, for what that's worth? -- criteria for certainty = knowledge that cannot be doubted or shown to be false, hence "absolute" knowledge. Looking at the other usage, I'm not sure whether an Absolute Conception that unifies and explains all knowledge would also need to demonstrate itself to be certain. And that's part of Williams' question -- does such a conception have to know that it is correct? He calls that "going too far."

We have a conflict of interest, however, because our conception wants to avoid the possibility of doubt, or maybe include every outcome. So in saving some of the world (or gaining a complete picture of it), we relegate the rest to “error” or "local predispositions". — Antony Nickles

Well, Williams concludes, "The most ambitious ideas that have been entertained of the absolute conception must fail," and this is part of why. I'd only add that I think "error" in Williams' sense, and "local predispositions," are distinct, though equally troubling, categories. From the absolute viewpoint, are all local predispositions errors? Not exactly. They are incomplete, and perhaps dependent on a framework that can't be made part of an absolute conception. But this isn't the sort of "error" that Williams believes an Absolute Conception needs a theory to explain. That error would be the one that claims to be "a rival view" to the Absolute Conception itself.

a moral disagreement is different than an aesthetic one or a scientific dispute. Kant might call the differences categorical, in what makes a thing imperative (to itself). — Antony Nickles

OK. When you wrote:

Judging a good shoe and what is considered a planet are different in kind, — Antony Nickles

I thought you might be thinking that the shoe question could not be settled objectively, whereas the planet question could. But I should have considered your choice of "planet" more carefully, since that's a recent example of a supposedly scientific question that turned on a matter of terminology. So -- objective as to language, in a way, but not as to heavenly bodies!

As Wittgenstein puts it, we see the same color to the extent we agree to call it that. This may or may not dovetail into seeing philosophy as a set of descriptions, rather than answers. — Antony Nickles

Or as any other particular thing, including "therapy" for misuses of language. Do you think there's a way to characterize what most of us call philosophy -- that is, the sort of conversation we're having here -- in Wittgensteinian terms that give it a use rather than a misuse? In a funny way, that's an "absolute conception" question too, though not Williams'.

In this, Nagel approaches something like a dialectic: not a fusion of subjective and objective, but a dialogical relationship between them. — Wayfarer

This is good. I think we forget, because the phrase is now part of the atmosphere, that "The View from Nowhere" was undoubtedly intended to sound absurd, to provoke the response, "Wait a minute, how could there be any such thing?" (Possibly a partial reason why Nagel chose it over "view from anywhere"?) Many who haven't read the book think Nagel uncritically espouses such a view. Rather, he's asking how it is that the philosophical desire for rationality and universalizability seems to pull us toward an impossible point of view, one that in addition abandons what it means to live a life -- that is, subjectivity. And yet we can't just ignore what appear to be the claims of rationality either. So -- yes, a dialectic.

:party: At the risk of jeopardizing our accord, I do need to clarify that I'm using "analysis" to mean something like conceptual analysis and its logical paraphernalia. To "lie beyond analysis" in this sense doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of making sense. I don't think Nagel or anyone else should try to discuss topics which can't meaningfully be talked about at all -- not within philosophy, anyway.

So… that’s it then. — Fire Ologist

Nah, just had to return to real life for a while. But I wanted to be sure to acknowledge my mistake first.

Isn’t this thread about more precision, so “doesn’t primarily concern” doesn’t seem rigorous and begs further details about what is the primary concern and how secondary or tertiary is the less concerning. — Fire Ologist

Precision is a focus here, for sure. But not at the cost of accuracy. I'm suggesting that it's more accurate to talk about a type of philosophy -- Nagel's, perhaps -- which avails itself when necessary of all the rigorous, analytic tools, but is aiming to discuss topics that lie beyond analysis as such. To try to carve this up into primary, secondary, and tertiary seems hopeless, but maybe you can give an example of what that might look like? I may not be picturing what you mean.

I think this contradicts you saying “though it need not.” — Fire Ologist

I don't see it. Can you elaborate?

This isn’t an argument. It’s just why I bother to seek something valuable by talking with other people. — Fire Ologist

Fair enough. As long as you agree it isn't an argument. There are about a bazillion arguments out there about how soundness and validity connect, if you want to chase them down. Maybe start with correspondence theories of truth?

You changed “relegated” to “devoted”. — Fire Ologist

You're absolutely right, I did, as in "devote itself to" -- a slightly different meaning, but my apologies for not remembering.

I think the Williamson essay is itself a good example, though I suppose some would dispute its rigor.

Or for a broader example, Thomas Nagel's work is my ideal of how philosophy can be remain rigorous and also ask questions that go beyond clarifying what is consistent or coherent within a given model. There are certainly others.

One thing to notice: The requirement to "completely forego the devotion to . . . " is surely too rigid, and also tendentious. By putting it in terms of "devotion," you're already building a rhetorical case against it, aren't you? Couldn't we just talk about "a type of philosophy that doesn't primarily concern itself with . . ." ?

Williams’ approach . . . — Joshs

Out of curiosity, what do you take Williams' position to be on the question of the Absolute Conception? Could you set it out in Williams' terms, rather than indicate how other philosophers might derogate it?

So now I ask you, must may the best good philosophy relegate devote itself to identifying and clarifying consistent/inconsistent and coherent/incoherent relations internal to systems/models? — Fire Ologist

Yes. Though it needn't.

Or is there more to it that can still be rigorous and ought to can be the work of philosophers? — Fire Ologist

Yes.

Well, I was thinking of some of the more extreme premises of the reductionist model. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course you were. This is the dark, problematic side of scientism. I don't know how we'd settle the question of whose "intuitiveness" we're talking about here, yours or mine or some Average Jill's, if there really is such a person. I'm only saying I think it likely that, until these knotty questions are posed, it remains something like "intuitively true" for most Westerners that the sunny Popular-Mechanics view of science is just fine, and deeply reflective of how the world actually operates.

OK. A little off-topic. I don't think anyone's talking about "an inner process of solipsistic self-confirmation." What confirmation may be available is being discussed in terms of shared practices and interpretations.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was saying the opposite: Self-reflexivity is virtually definitive of philosophy. I was contrasting this with what I took @Antony Nickles to be saying -- that there is no difference between the problem situation of reflecting philosophically about, for instance, science, and reflecting philosophically about philosophy.

I would question the exact way in which this is "mainstream." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, so would I, but I'm also doubtful about the corrective narrative you offer. I'm not sure what domain you're quantifying over :smile: , and who the actors in this drama are. This would be an example:

First, the model isn't intuitive. It makes explaining the most obvious facets of our experience of the world impossible, dismissing most of human experience as in some way "illusory," and leaves all sorts of phenomena, particularly life and consciousness (quite important areas) as irresolvable mysteries. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Our" experience? This only applies to people who think philosophically or critically about it. I'd contend that, for most Western adults with an average education, the scientific model is totally intuitive: There's the world out there; scientific method teaches us truths about that world, and shows us how the world works; we can use it predict things and build things; it's been unbelievably successful at doing this, and improving human life. It makes "explaining the most obvious facets of our experience of the world" -- the astonishing order and regularities we discover around us -- possible. What's the problem?!

We on TPF can name some problems, but they simply don't surface unless you stop and think, "Well, what about consciousness? What about values? What about numbers? What about God?" etc. etc. But these questions -- and the move that links them with questions about science -- are not intuitive at all, unless you have a philosophical (or possibly a religious) bent.

This may just be a disagreement about what "intuitive" ought to mean, but all I can say is, given the way I was educated about science in public schools, I'd say my characterization of science, above, is second nature to me, and to most of my peers. It "makes sense": Got a question? Perform a controlled experiment; get the answer. This isn't right, of course, but we're talking about what seems intuitively true, based on education and culture.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value. — TLP 6.41–6.522

Your entire quote from the Tractatus is very apropos to the question of an Absolute Conception. We could make this substitution:

"In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no Absolute Conception—and if there were, it could not be absolutely true."

What I'm getting at is that the View from Nowhere puts some very peculiar demands on us as denizens of "the world." If "all happening and being-so is accidental," nothing we say in philosophy can escape this. It's all "local," in Williams' terms. "What makes it non-accidental [that is, what makes the Absolute Conception absolute, or unconditioned] cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental." So, how could we meet this demand?

And yet philosophy (in its reflective capacity) can’t help but trace the contours of what it cannot fully name — whether it’s called the unconditioned, the transcendental, the One, or the Ground. Not a thing, but not nothing. — Wayfarer

Yes, something like this. Do you think "trace the contours of what it cannot fully name" is the situation Williams is describing when he points out that "to ask not just that we should know, but that we should know that we know" is asking too much?

his 'that of which we cannot speak' is not the 'taboo on metaphysics' that the Vienna Circle took it to be - as Wittgenstein himself said:

There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
— 6522 — Wayfarer

Yes.

I don't know what can be said about consciousness in regards to any hypothesis. They are either right or wrong. No? — Patterner

Yes, but other hypotheses allow a basis for discussion about how you'd tell.

But I'm not saying everything is consciousness. I'm saying everything is consciousness. — Patterner

Typing mistake here, I assume? Or else you're getting super woo-woo. :smile: